I need some help, boys. My mom turned the oven on not knowing that the cast-iron pan was in there, and I'm pretty sure it got burnt. Pic related is what happens when I wipe it down with a paper towel, even after cleaning it with hot water and putting oil on. Am I going to have to strip it and reseason? What do you recommend?
>>7258116
Unless she put the self-clean setting on, it's fine yo. Maybe cook an egg on it, see if it tastes bitter
Use a scrub brush or mildly abrasive scrubber with hot water, maybe a little bit of soap since it looks like it's got a bunch of oily gunk on it. Apply a new coat of seasoning when you're done
>>7258125
Nope, it was just at a high enough heat to cook a frozen pizza.
Is that rust in this picture?
>>7258141
oh yeah if it's that low, but you're still worried about it, just give the whole thing a wipe down with some paper towels, wipe some more oil on it, bake it in, and you're good.
Honestly though, it's not necessary, you could leave it as-is and I can't see anything going wrong, the pan looks fine to me
Those spots look like they could be rust, but as it stands it looks fine. If you were feeling like making work for yourself, you could scrub that with some steel wool and coat the area again, but it's not really worth the effort for such minor rust.
Basically, the pan looks fine, just looks like it might have been cleaned a bit too lightly at some point in the past, which isn't a biggie at all
>>7258116
The only way you can damage a cast iron pan with heat is if you heat it up so much that it melts. That temperature far, far, exceeds that of a normal oven.
It is possible to heat it up enough that the seasoning is damaged, but:
1) that didn't happen in your case because the pan doesn't have a gray ashy appearance to it.
2) even if it did happen all you need to do is re-season the pan.
>>rust
No, that's not rust. Rust is reddish color. Your pan is black. Your photo is showing layers of grime caused by not cleaning the pan.
Your pan is fine. All you need to do is clean it.
you'll know if she cooked the seasoning
it smells and the pan will have gray where the seasoning was destroyed
i know from experience
>>7258116
>"HOW'D IT GET BURNED!?"
>"HOW'D IT GET BURNED!?"
>>7258202
If it's improperly seasoned, heating will accelerate the rusting process. But that's still very minor.
>>7258116
I leave my cast iron pan in the oven all the time. Even when I'm cooking other shit or baking. I think it acts like a heat sink (anyone want to disprove this, please do). And the pan is fine and doesn't have any issues.
Also that's stuff you wiped off is what you should have done before you stored it away.
>>7258116
It's probably just carbon. Put it on the stove at high heat and add cooking salt to it. Once the salt heats up scrub it around with a paper towel on the end of tongs and it'll scrape off all the carbon but not scrape off the seasoning. Then you add a thin layer of flax seed oil and season
>>7258116
That's just what cast iron looks like when you use too much oil and too low a heat to season it properly. The chunks and brown bits are just clumps of oil that haven't polymerized properly.
Scrub it down lightly with a fine gauge steel wool to take down most of the gunk, then apply a thin coat of oil, and re-season it, properly.
